


And if We Turn Back Time

by CS_Part_II



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 11:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7505815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CS_Part_II/pseuds/CS_Part_II
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iwaizumi and Oikawa go their separate ways after graduating college and spend the next five years avoiding each other. Until a text from Oikawa's mother changes everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And if We Turn Back Time

"Hajime's going to be in Tokyo," the text from Oikawa's mother said. "He wants to see you."

Oikawa had ignored it. At first, it was just because he had been so busy. The volleyball season was about to start, after all, which meant FC Tokyo was in the most intense part of its training camp, a camp that didn't leave much time (or energy) for Oikawa to do anything else. He was lucky enough if he could get an hour of mindless television in before going to sleep. But once their days off came around and he had some time to think about things… well, he hadn’t wanted to think about Iwaizumi. After all, hadn't they spent their lives since college carefully avoiding each other? Moving to different cities. Calling home discretely to see if the other was (or planning to be) in town. Not discretely enough, though… Oikawa's parents had figured out what was going on soon enough, and exchanged worried glances every time Hajime came up in conversation.

But they didn't ask him about it. And he was glad, because he didn't want to talk about it. At first it was because it hurt too much, but then… well, he guessed avoiding Iwaizumi had just become habit at some point.

"You should meet him," Ushiwaka said.

Oikawa frowned and lamented that his best friend these days was Ushiwaka, of all people. How the hell had that happened?

Right. When they kept being invited to the same special training camps, played together on the National team, and ended up on the same professional team. The only two in their year to become professional players. Players better than them (the few that existed) dropped out due to injuries, and players worse either didn't make it or decided they were interested in something other than volleyball. Oikawa guessed he and Ushiwaka were just too consumed with volleyball to see that there was a world outside of it.

At any rate, they were currently laying on the massage tables after a particularly grueling practice, letting the sadistic team masseuses work their magic. Oikawa's muscles protested as they were kneaded and pulled in cruel and unusual ways, but at least he wouldn't be sore to the bone the next day.

"What do you know?" Oikawa asked. "You barely know how to interact with other humans. Maybe that's why we get along, because you're as close to an alien as I'm ever going to meet."

"I've been with my fiancée for three years, we're deeply in love, and we're getting married once this season is over." Of course this was said in complete monotone. Ushiwaka may have been madly in love with the cute nurse he was engaged to, but he talked about her the way he talked about his shoes. They were funny together, or at least Oikawa thought so… she was outgoing, affectionate, and tiny, in stark contrast to the hulking Easter Island Moai she had fallen in love with.

"Touché." 

"You haven't had any serious relationships since him," Ushiwaka continued.

"Don't use your stupid facts and logic on me," Oikawa said, tone light and teasing. "I won't fall for those tricks."

"Oikawa." Ah, Ushiwaka's most deadpan of deadpan voices, used only… well, almost all the time.

Oikawa sighed. He gestured for the masseuses to leave the room, not really wanting other people around while he discussed such a raw subject. And that was really the crux of it, wasn't it? It still felt raw, his whole being scraped up and bloody, no matter how much time had gone by. _Here_ , he imagined himself saying, ripping his heart out of his chest and handing it to Iwaizumi before Iwaizumi threw the still-beating thing off an overpass and into heavy traffic.

"What's the point?" Oikawa was not unaware of how tired he sounded as he asked that. Dolly Parton's "Here You Come Again" started to play in his head (yes, he had a random thing for American country music, and he wasn't ashamed of it, thank you very much). "Why now? Why does he want to see me again?"

"Don't you have to meet him to get the answers to those questions?" Ushiwaka asked, although obviously, it wasn't really a question. "Things didn't work out between you because you were both young, insecure, and stubborn. But maybe they'll work out now."

Oikawa swallowed the lump forming in his throat. That was absolutely the worst thing Ushiwaka could have said, he thought. Because now it gave him hope. Hope that maybe they could rekindle their relationship. And he hated that there was a small part of him that clung to that hope, that wanted to cherish and grow that hope, until it came to fruition. He didn't want to think there might be a chance Iwaizumi still saw him in a romantic light, because he would be devastated if that wasn't true.

"He's contacting me because he's completely over me," Oikawa said. "So he doesn’t see the harm in connecting with an old friend. That's all I am to him now, an old friend."

"You don't know that."

After the massage, Oikawa ended up going on a long run. He knew it wasn't smart to do. Overtraining had gotten him into trouble early in his career, leading to an injury that could have been career-ending if it had been just a little worse. But he needed to clear his head, and a long run around his favorite Tokyo side streets was the best way he could think of to do it. He ran for two hours before he stumbled over the threshold of his apartment, sweaty and spent, shedding clothes as he made a beeline for his shower.

Oikawa Tooru's apartment was on the small side, but it had as much spaces as he needed or wanted, and you couldn't beat its location and amenities. Modern with a traditional Japanese flair, or at least that's what the brochure advertised, it looked like a westerner's ideal of the Japanese aesthetic, with carpet that evoked tatami floors and paint that tried to emulate the texture of bamboo. The furniture, picked out by Oikawa's mother, was mostly high-end traditional Japanese pieces, although Oikawa himself had bought several flashy conversation-starters from his travels to scatter throughout.

Against the wall of the living room stood a small cedar bookshelf. On the lower shelf of this bookshelf sat some magazines that would probably escape the notice of most guests who visited Oikawa. After all, they were just magazines, and at most guests might appreciate having something to flip through if they were visiting and bored. They were mostly outdoors and photography magazines full of pretty images to look at.

To Oikawa, though, these magazines were picked out for a very particular reason, and when he got out of the shower he put on some boxers and a t-shirt and grabbed one before sinking into his low sofa. He flipped to a dog-eared page: a panoramic from the top of some rock formation in Utah, scenery painted in hues of red and orange. It was beautiful, in the way that photographs of beautiful scenery were going to be beautiful themselves, and the formation must have been a feat to climb. But it was the name in the caption that Oikawa was looking at. Iwaizumi Hajime. He touched the letters, as though it were at all similar to touching the real thing.

He had found the first magazine at his parents' house, and they in turn had probably received it from Iwaizumi's parents. It had surprised him, because Iwaizumi had never had a deep interest in photography. Really, his interest had been limited to a casual desire to take good photographs on their vacations together. Oikawa often wondered how Iwaizumi had fallen into photography as a career path. Did he somehow discover a passion he didn't know he had? Had he stumbled into it through connections and lack of other options? Oikawa had all sorts of imagined plotlines for Iwaizumi's life that he was too scared to verify, although all it would take was a phone call home.

After finding the first magazine, Oikawa had made sure to look for other magazines Iwaizumi's work might be in. He would stand in convenience stores and book shops for way too much time, flipping through glossy pages, scanning for those familiar characters, and cross-referencing with magazines he still sometimes found in his parents' home just to make sure he hadn't missed any. He had tried to stop, but it was really an addiction, pining away for a relationship that had left him devastated.

Oikawa's phone chirped, and he reached out to see who had just texted him.

_Ushiwaka:  
You're not looking at his name in a magazine caption, are you?_

Seriously. How in the world did he end up with Ushiwaka as a best friend? It was a total downgrade, although Oikawa didn't want to think too hard about who he had downgraded from. He threw the magazine back onto its bookshelf and went to sleep.

That night, Oikawa dreamt about Iwaizumi. Iwaizumi was climbing Everest, or some other similar-looking mountain, they were all the same to Oikawa. It was all white sky and icy ground, and Iwaizumi was breathing deeply as he climbed up the side. But he got to the top, and when he did, his face relaxed into the most sublime, most content expression Oikawa had ever seen. Like he had just figured out the meaning of life, and it was a beautiful thing. He got out his camera and started setting it up, but then turned, his barely-there smile growing ever so slightly as he reached out for the hand of a person behind him. A person that he laughed with, pulled closer to him… a person he was happy with. A person who wasn't Oikawa.

Needless to say, Oikawa was not happy when he woke up the next day. He half-assed it through morning practice, earning a lecture from one of the coaches, and barely paid attention to his agent as they spent his lunch driving to a photo shoot. The afternoon was reserved for media. Oikawa wasn't the best player in the team, and didn't do a lot of press conferences or team-related press, but he was arguably the most photogenic. Which meant lots of endorsements, more endorsements than the better players on the team, a point of contention when Oikawa first started. Well, he won his teammates all over in the end with his dedication to the sport.

This afternoon was a shoot for one of those pointless celebrity magazines, then an appearance at a PR event one of his sponsors (an up-and-coming energy drink company) was holding. Shaking hands and kissing babies. It was crazy he never tried a career in politics, Oikawa thought to himself, he was so good at faking interest in other people when he wanted to. One blushing fangirl came up to him to ask him to sign a borderline homoerotic underwear advertisement he did with Ushiwaka about a year ago (the media had loved their high school rivals narrative, and had gone crazy with it). Oikawa remembered the first time he found a BL starring him and Ushiwaka… he had laughed out loud, causing everyone in the store to turn around and stare at him, then he bought two copies. He had spent the next day trying to embarrass Ushiwaka with pages of one of the copies, but the other man, true to form, had shrugged it off.

"I don't see how that's relevant to me," Ushiwaka had said, not even flinching when he came back into the locker room after one practice session to find pages from the most explicit scene taped up all over his locker. He hadn't even bothered to remove the pictures, that's how little he cared. The teammate with the locker next to Ushiwaka's eventually took them down a few days later.

"I'm sick of seeing you and Ushijima fucking," he had said to Oikawa as he tore the pictures up and threw them in the trash.

The BL had only gotten worse after Oikawa officially came out in the media, not that he was ever really hiding in the closet. He was basically paired off with all the popular figures in sports after that. None of which he ever really dated, but that was beside the point, anyway.

Back at the PR event, Oikawa finally managed to slip away and seclude himself in an empty room. He just wanted to get away from the crowds a little bit and take a breather for a little bit, and decided to check his voicemails and text messages while he was there.

_Ushiwaka:  
Emi and I are thinking of going out of town next weekend. Can you feed our cats?_

_PITA:  
In Town. Dinner? Drinks? Hotel room?_

_Unknown:  
Hope you don't mind, got your number from your parents. I'm in Tokyo for business. We should meet up. -Hajime_

Oikawa felt the breath leave his body. He stared at the characters on the screen, unable to even begin writing a reply text. Oikawa went through every word, every sentence, turning it over in his mind. He tried to find the hidden meanings that Iwaizumi hadn't written, tried to decipher what Iwaizumi's thoughts must have been when he wrote it. And through it all he couldn't escape that heavy feeling weighing down on him, knowing that these were the first words they had exchanged in five years.

Oikawa forced himself to breath. He was overthinking things. It was fine. Everything was fine. He just had to reply normally. He went through his texts again…

_Sure, just let me know exact dates you need me to come over._

Sent.

_Keep on dreaming, Mr. Delusional._

Sent.

_Iwa-chaaa~aan, it's been sooo long--_

Wait, no, Oikawa thought, before holding down the delete key. What the hell was normally? Because it sure didn't feel normal to pretend that nothing ever happened. He took a deep breath and went through the situation in his mind. Iwaizumi was contacting him after they hadn't even spoken in five years, and had texted him like it meant absolutely nothing. Oikawa flinched at the thought, but it was the most accurate assessment he could come up with. Fine. He was fine with that. If Iwaizumi was over him, well, he could show  that he was over Iwaizumi too. And maybe when Iwaizumi saw how great he was doing and how amazing his life was, Iwaizumi would realize what a huge mistake it had been to let him go in the first place. Not that Oikawa wanted them to get back together… or at least he didn't think he did. He just wanted an ex-boyfriend to realize how stupid it was to let things end with someone like Oikawa Tooru. _I was the best thing to ever happened to him_ , Oikawa thought to himself. _There's no way he could ever find someone half as talented, intelligent, or attractive as I am_.

Buoyed by a small wave of confidence, Oikawa started typing again.

_Sure. I'll check with my assistant to see if I'm free._

Casual. Nonchalant. Noncommittal. Oikawa hit send, happy enough with the text.

Several days and short texts later (to Oikawa's disgust, Iwaizumi's texts were just as curt as his, with no hint of what Iwaizumi was doing with his life or any deep feelings he might be holding), Oikawa found himself sitting in the booth of a higher-end izakaya. Trendy glasses, slim jeans, designer t-shirt, sharp blazer… all of it was tailored perfectly to show off the lines of his body, and if the stares he got while walking over here were any indication, Iwaizumi would have a hard time keeping his eyes off of him. Because Iwaizumi, contrary to what he might say, had never been immune to Oikawa's good looks. And Oikawa was going to make Iwaizumi regret the fact that they weren't together.

Oikawa heard Iwaizumi before he saw him. He heard the other man's gruff voice as he said something indeterminable to the hostess, and while it made his heart skip a little, it gave him time to prepare. So he stilled his heart and put on a smile, looking up just as Iwaizumi waked around the corner.

Oh. Oikawa's breath hitched a little. Because it was Iwa-chan, standing right in front of him, five years older but mostly the same. Same haircut. Same perpetual scowl. Same deep brown eyes that seemed to see straight through him.

"Iwa-" Oikawa started, keeping his tone light and chipper, before he looked down a little bit and instantly floundered.

Because Iwaizumi wasn't alone. Because, in Iwaizumi's arms, was a roughly nine-month-old baby. A baby that looked exactly like Iwaizumi.

"Sorry," Iwaizumi said. "The sitter canceled at the last minute. I hope you don't mind… this is my son, Seijuro."


End file.
